


While the world is full of troubles

by regshoe



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Fairies, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 11:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20723477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regshoe/pseuds/regshoe
Summary: 'The boy said that he had been taken by Hubert's men while still a baby and abandoned in the forest. But theDaoine Sidhehad found him and taken him to live with them in Faerie.'The story of a night in the last years of the eleventh century, in the wilds of northern England.





	While the world is full of troubles

**Author's Note:**

> Contains mentions and threats of harm to children.
> 
> The summary quote is from chapter 45 of _Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell_.

It was a humble dwelling, built of the same rough grey stone as the scree around it, nestled in the lee of the steep slope below the fell's summit. A narrow track led up through the rushes and moor-grass towards it, and dwindled away to nothing amongst the trees that covered the lower slope on the far side. At their edge was a little pool, black in the moonlight. On any other night, it would have been a peaceful scene: the hillside deserted, the inhabitants of the hut asleep in their beds, perhaps an owl gliding on silent wings over the moor to hunt the small scurrying animals that hid in the grass, nothing else to disturb the quiet. Tonight, the hut was aflame.

Here it was that John d'Uskglass, after his long persecution and eventual defeat by the followers of Hubert de Cotentin, had been hiding for some weeks with what was left of his family. And here it was that de Cotentin's men had found him at last.

A man was running away from the dancing flames and the sounds of screaming, half-stumbling across the rough ground as he left the track to cut across the bare moorland. He held a sword in one hand, and the other arm clutched a bundle wrapped in a ragged blanket. On he ran in the pale moonlight, which grew as the awful light of the fire receded into the distance, and he did not slacken his pace until he reached the shelter of the trees. Here he paused, looked back—and, seeing that his flight had not been observed and that no one had followed him, he sheathed his sword and took the shape wrapped in the blanket in both arms.

Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled mournfully. 

The young man had not been long in the service of de Cotentin, and was a stranger to these high northern fells. He was a soldier, and had no illusions about what his lord and the hardships of battle might demand of him; and doubtless he believed that de Cotentin's cause was a righteous one. Even so, he had a young man's compassion and a Christian's charity, and there were some lengths to which he would not go.

He pulled aside a fold of the blanket, and looked at the child's face. Somehow, it was still asleep. The tiny features were twisted into a worried expression, but were otherwise quite peaceful; they barely responded when the young man placed the child gently down on the ground, in the shelter of a spreading oak tree. The child shifted its body a little, as if snuggling closer to the gnarled tree-roots and the stems of ivy that twined around them, and then lay still.

The young man stood back. In all likelihood, he thought, the poor thing would die anyway, left out here. But there was always the chance that someone would find him (the place was not entirely deserted—that, after all, had been how they learnt where d'Uskglass was); and even if no one did, it was far better to let the wind and the cold do it than to have such a stain on his own soul.

Sounds were louder here, in the deathly quiet of the wood. The young man could hear every rustle of the fallen leaves shifting beneath his feet. Even the distant bell sounded closer; and that was a strange thing, for there was no church tower for miles around...

The young man pulled his cloak closer around him, shivering as if in a sudden cold wind. Then he left the child asleep beneath the tree, and ran back to join his companions.

*

Not more than twenty paces away, at the edge of the dark pool, three figures stood gazing towards the burning hut. One of them, a tall lady with long rippling hair the colour of moonlight, was speaking in a rapid whisper to the others.

'...And so,' she said, 'he saw that he would get no help from the treacherous king, and he fled from his wicked enemy, and came here—for to the Christians this is a very remote spot, and no one would think to look for a fugitive enemy in such a dreary place! But Hubert de Cotentin is clever as well as wicked, and he saw just what his enemy would do, and he has sent his men here to destroy John d'Uskglass and all his family—even down to the little son still in his cradle. It is such fun!' She laughed lightly, a sound like a beck running over smooth stones, and her two listeners joined in.

'It is so sad,' said one of her companions, shaking her dark head, 'to see how the Christians turn on one another. Traitorous, backstabbing fools! Why, the great King's people can scarcely have been in this country a month, and already they grow tired of slaughtering their conquered enemies and must take to killing each other instead.' She gave a contemptuous little sigh and smoothed out her dress: this was made from various leaves, twigs and lichens all stitched together with a greyish thread, giving her something of the appearance of a small tree.

'It reminds me,' said the third figure, a youthful gentleman with a thin face and soft brown hair rather like those of a weasel, 'of your father's campaign against the king of'—he spoke a name in a language not often heard by Christians—'why! it was only five hundred years ago.'

'Not at all!' said the lady with the dress of leaves. 'My father was entirely justified in what he did, for his enemy was a wicked king, quite treacherous and terrible. Why, burning his castle on its mountaintop and casting his children onto the rocks below was the least that could be—'

Here she was stopped by the first figure, the lady with hair like moonlight, who was pointing to something moving out from under the trees not far from where they stood. 'Who is that? What is he doing?'

'He is running towards the battle,' said the weasel-like gentleman. 'Does he think to join them?'

'He was there before,' said the lady in the dress of leaves. 'He must have run away—the coward!—and now he is going back.'

'Perhaps he found something in the wood,' suggested the other lady.

'Or hid something there,' said the weasel-like gentleman.

'He might have been burying stolen treasure!' said the lady in the dress of leaves, her eyes gleaming.

Presently, they grew bored of the violence and horror of the burning house and the fighting men (there was, in any case, not much left to see—de Cotentin's task had been an easy one, in the end), and walked away through the wood, still talking in whispers. Their voices were like the wind that stirred the new leaves on the branches above their heads.

'Such fun!' the tall lady with hair like moonlight was saying. 'Tomorrow I shall go to Byzantium, whence the Crusaders are marching to lay siege to the city of their enemies. It promises to be very terrible and bloody.'

'I shall not join you,' said the weasel-like gentleman, 'for I must direct my servants in the building of my new castle. They are very stupid at times, though they are so beautiful, with their glossy feathers and their—what is that?'

He was pointing to a patch of deeper shadow beneath a tall, spreading oak tree. Half-hidden beneath the trailing ivy leaves lay a tiny child, wrapped in a rough blanket and apparently asleep.

'Is it a Christian child?' said the lady in the dress of leaves.

'Certainly,' said the tall lady. 'I am sure I would remember if we had left one of ours out here.'

And a Christian child it was: the babe, though asleep, had that indefinable quality of brightness and vigour about him that fairy children never do (hence the notorious custom those unpleasant people have of kidnapping Christian mothers to nurse their babies, in the hope that they will impart some of their strength to the weakly fairy children). Apart from this, the child's appearance was much like that of all very young children; the only distinguishing characteristics were a certain slight sharpness to the features and a few locks of black hair escaping from under the folds of the blanket. The three wanderers in the forest were quite at a loss to account for this strange apparition.

'Well, where can it have come from?' The lady's foot (which was clad in an exquisitely-shaped, jewel-encrusted boot made from unicorn leather, the colour of spring on the mountains) emerged from beneath her lichen-sewn hem and poked experimentally towards the child. The weasel-like gentleman pushed her back with an expression of impatience.

'Perhaps the man we saw running away left it here,' said the tall lady with hair like moonlight.

'Of course!' said the lady in the dress of leaves. 'He saw that it would be far more cruel to leave the babe to die of cold, or to be torn to pieces by wild wolves, than simply to kill it himself. We underestimated him! Never judge a man before you know his true intentions.'

'You think, then,' said the weasel-like gentleman, 'that this is the infant son of John d'Uskglass?'

'I do not see who else it can be,' said the tall lady.

'Hmm! Then he is rather an important Christian, after all.' He looked at the child speculatively.

Behind them, out beyond the trees, the chaos had died down. The house was still burning, but by now the little that there had been to burn was all but gone; and the soldiers, like the fire, had done all that there was for them to do, and had left.

It started to rain, softly at first, the water whispering down through the night. After the violence of the evening, the high moorland settled down to its accustomed sleep beneath the blanketing rain. The broken surface of the pool reflected the falling raindrops above it like a dark glass beneath the gloomy sky.

The tall moonlight-haired lady, the lady in the dress of leaves and the weasel-like gentleman realised all at once that there were only themselves and the abandoned Christian child left in all that wide, lonely place.

'Well, then. What shall we do?' said the lady with hair like moonlight, her tone for the first time a little uncertain. 'Shall we kill him?'

As if in response to this, the child finally awoke. He opened his eyes—bright, intelligent dark eyes rather like those of a little bird—and regarded them curiously in the little light that remained under the trees. Then he pulled one hand free of the blanket and reached it out towards them.

The weasel-like gentleman reached his own long, slender fingers down towards the child, who promptly took one of them in a determined grip. Kneeling on the fallen oak leaves, the gentleman laughed. He said something to the child in his own language, and received in reply a solemn, dark stare and the relinquishing of his finger. The tall lady looked at him oddly; the lady with the dress of leaves was still watching the child, a smile playing on her features.

'No,' said the gentleman at last. 'We shall not kill him. We shall take him with us, back to our own kingdom.' He stood up, brushing leaves off his tunic. 'I rather think I should like to have the boy for a servant. When he is a little older he shall make a charming picture alongside my other servants, who are the birds of the wood and the little animals that hide in amongst the trees.'

The lady in the dress of leaves nodded thoughtfully. 'Yes, I see. He is like them.' The child smiled at her as if he comprehended her words.

'Indeed! They all know how to listen and understand me, and it seems he does also—a rare thing in a Christian child.'

The fire had gone out completely by now. The house was a sodden and blackened ruin, and the landscape around it grew cold and dark as the rain fell heavier and the clouds moved in to block out the last of the moonlight. Dawn was still hours away.

The weasel-like gentleman picked up the Christian child, who laughed (the first sound he had made in all that long, eventful night); and they went together with his companions further into the wood. A short way down the hillside the whole company disappeared behind the ragged, drooping branches of a lichen-hung birch, and did not emerge again.

A little while later, all that was left in England was the grey falling rain.


End file.
